OF BHARATAVAR8A OR INDIA. 
179 
asses, goats, and pigs represent their property. They earn 
hesides a precarious living by selling grass-mats and cane or 
bamboo-baskets, which are made by the men, but hawked 
about and sold by the women. In their wanderings they 
sometimes commit all sorts of robberies and often are trouble- 
some dacoits and highway robbers. 
Accounts vary about their marriage customs. Accord- 
ing to some, the tali or marriage string is bound round the 
The rDarriage ceremony consists in sprinkling rice and turmeric over the 
bride and bridegroom's head ; and after it is over the bride returns to her 
parents and remains with them for five days. . . The Coorroo attaches much 
importance to the purity of their unmarried females, bat they regard a want 
of integrity in their married women as a trivial matter.... They drink 
all sorts of intoxicating drinks, but never use opium or any of the pre- 
parations from hemp.. They never use the flesh of the horse, jackall, 
tiger, cheetah, or crow ; but they eat the hog, mouse, rat, vrild rat, and 
fowls.. It is difiicult to say what their religion is. They do not bind on the 
tali in marriage, or use any of the Hindu sectarian mai'ks on their foreheads, 
neither do they revere the Brahmans or any religious superior, nor perform 
any religious ceremony at any Hindu or Budhist temple, but they told me 
that, when they pray, they construct a small pyramid of clay which they 
term Mariammah and worship it. But though they seem thus almost with- 
out a form of religion, the women had small gold and silver ornaments 
suspended from cords round their necks and which they said had been 
supplied to them by a goldsmith from whom they had ordered figures of 
Mariamma. The form represented is that of the goddess KaU, the wife of 
Siva. They mentioned that they had been told by their forefathers that, 
when a good man dies, his spirit enters the body of some of the better 
animals as that of a horse or cow, and that a bad man's spirit gives life to the 
form of a dog or jackall ; but though they told me this they did not seem to 
believe it. They believe firmly, however, in the existence and constant 
presence of a principle of evil, who, they say, frequently appears. . . When 
they die the married people are burned, but the unmarried are buried quite 
naked without a shroud or kufn, or other clothing, a custom which some 
other castes in India likewise follow. . . The Coorroo people are naturally of 
a bamboo-color, tho-igh tanned by the sun into a darker hue. Their faces 
are oval with prominent bones, their features having something of the 
Tartar expression of countenance.. . The dialect spoken by the ' Coorroo ' 
as their lingua franca, in their intercourse with the people of the country, is 
the Teloogoo, and I was surprised to find them entirely ignorant of the 
Canarese language although living exclusively among the Canarese nation." 
Compare also Mr. H. E. Stokes' account of these people in the Manual of 
the Nellore District, compiled and edited by Mr. John A. C. Boswell, M.c.s., 
pp. 154-157: "These people (the Yerukalas) wander from place to place, 
as they find it easy to gain a living, pitching their huts generally in open 
places near villages. Their property consists principally of cattle and asses. 
